Selling Off Art to Support a Better World

HAMBURG, Germany — The German art collector and curator Ingvild Goetz has spent over five decades scouting for talent. But she has also resisted the mainstream market and leveraged her collection to engage with social causes.

In 2013, she sold 128 works to increase funding for philanthropy. Among the artists featured in the approximately $10 million auctions were Richard Prince and Christoper Wool, whose “Mad Cow” sold for over $3 million.

While Ms. Goetz had already supported the needs of refugees and people with eating disorders, and underwritten schools in Africa and a temple in Nepal, the sale allowed her to intensify her programs. Her initiatives have included video courses for refugees and the online storyboard ninette.berlin about eating disorders, aimed at girls ages 11 to 15.

Also in 2013, Ms. Goetz donated her collection of video art to the state of Bavaria and made the collection as a whole, which includes almost 5,000 works, available on permanent loan to the Bavarian State Museums, the Haus der Kunst in Munich and the Neues Museum in Nuremberg. A partnership with the Haus der Kunst was already forged in 2011 to co-curate exhibits of video art, a medium that had not received significant attention in the Bavarian capital.

The Goetz Collection is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with the three-part exhibit “Generations,” exploring female artists. The first installment, which includes the young painter Lucy Dodd and the 1960s pop artist Sister Mary Corita Kent, is on view through July 13 at Ms. Goetz’s museum in Munich. The building, designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, opened in 1993, before they did the Tate Modern in London and other blockbuster projects.

In an interview, Ms. Goetz, 76, said that while she had retreated slightly from overseeing the museum’s activities, she was still curating and collecting. “It’s a disease which unfortunately never terminates.” She continued, with a touch of irony, that she had amassed a disproportionate number of female artists. “As a woman, I am more strongly spoken to by the topics they address,” she said.

She is not interested, however, in feminist art that “places social critique or politics in the foreground,” acknowledging the feminine, emotional side to artists such as Mike Kelley or Matthew Barney, of whom she was an early collector.

Her current passion lies less with the latest work of the young generation than with artists such as the Romanian native Geta Bratescu who were overlooked before the fall of the Iron Curtain. (The following interview has been translated, edited and condensed.)

What motivated you to part with art you had collected and devote more resources to philanthropic activities?

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Lucy Dodd’s painting “Butterfly” (2017) is on display at Ms. Goetz’s museum in Munich.CreditCourtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers, David Lewis Gallery, New York and Sammlung Goetz, München

I saw how works are sold for a fortune on the current art market, while there are people who live in such poverty that they can’t afford basics. There are fates that could be saved if money were available, and I own works that are, in the meanwhile, worth a great deal.

Some artists today see that the market is exploding and produce for it. There are also exceptional artists who aren’t present. That appalled me at a certain point. I realized that I was part of this system. When I saw how much you can help people in the world with the same money, I started an auction. And I will surely do it again.

How did the sale allow you to increase the scope of charitable activities?

I had already started a program for anorexia, but was able to develop a much more intense framework. It used to be a taboo in Germany. You could find few books on the subject but a whole library of dieting advice. Through extra financial support I have been able to connect institutions that had been working independently.

As early as 15 years ago, I was also involved in helping refugees in Munich. I bought public transportation passes and films and projectors to improve their quality of life. I did a lot at my own initiative because there were few people willing to help. In the meantime, it has become practically fashionable.

I now focus only on women and children. In Nuremberg I support a cafe for female refugees, where they can ask questions about their rights in Germany and attend lectures. I have visited and seen how much self-confidence these women have developed.

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Children who were invited to Ms. Goetz’s museum dressed up and posed for pictures inspired by a “Bus Riders” exhibition by the American photographer Cindy Sherman.

CreditAnna Schels

I think we all have to help in the areas where it is really necessary. The state is not always flexible. We could be more active in taking in children from Syrian orphanages or women and children who are alone in camps.

How do you get immigrants and young people involved with your collection?

We invite children to visit our museum and create an artwork in reaction to what they have seen. Particularly lovely was when they dressed up and took pictures of themselves after an exhibit of the American photographer Cindy Sherman.

You have also underwritten educational activities abroad.

Together with the director of an asylum home in Munich, I raised funds for a school in Ghana. The women learned to use sewing machines and the men to fix bikes, so that they could find jobs in their villages. I bought a bus to transport children there. In Mali I have also supported three schools.

My husband [Stephan Goetz] and I made it possible for a monastery in Nepal to build a dormitory for young monks. There is such extreme poverty that all the parents in the area want their children to be recruited. We wanted the monks to be able to accept more. We also wanted them to have a proper meditation room. It is now very splendid.

I think it’s important to realize that one can do so much with little money. Some of the artworks I bought two or three decades ago cost $10,000 and are now worth over $1 million. But projects such as the women’s cafe in Nuremberg make me much happier than if a work of art has appreciated in value. The joy of spending $20 million on a painting lasts maybe three weeks. The other kind [of joy] one always has.